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Want to make a living as a creator online? Find your ‘true fan’ number.

While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

He goes on to explain that the number of ‘true fans’ may be different depending on what you want to do, how many people you work with and even where you live. Personally, I would drop the ‘1,000’ bit.

Anyway, I’ve heard this notion expressed before, I think in an interview with Jonathan Coulton. As someone who has been a passionate fan of several writers, artists and filmmakers I can totally believe in this model. You don’t have to buy into the notion that you either become a megastar or a failure. So long as you know you’re great at whatever it is you do, there should be a way to make a living out of it.

I find myself at this site every time I need a name for an Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age character, etc, but it's actually an incredible resource for writers of fantasy and science fiction works looking for not just character names, but place names, vehicle names, drink names, drug dames, disease names and many, many more.

Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. It is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world's best-known writers of IF.

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